And I Thought Smith's Colonial Motel's No Vacancy Sign Was Due to Leaf Freaks.

 

Let me be clear about a few things. First of all fall fishing can be very good, if most people are hunting, watching football games or working on their honey do lists. Why? The browns are busy spawning, which takes a huge percentage of the river's fish out of the game. The hatches are mostly very small flies and don't compare with the blanket hatches of big bugs seen in the spring. You are mostly fishing for rainbows and juvenile browns. When there is an onslaught of fishermen, the fish that are rising, quickly learn to let the duns go and eat emergers in the water column.

Today, the number of anglers on the EB and BK, (didn't look anywhere else), was for the second half of October, simply unbelievable. Every fishing access lot was filled with cars, there were multiple fishermen in every pool on both the EB and BK that I drove by, trailers were lined up at every takeout. Simply stated, I couldn't find a place to fish, IN THE MIDDLE OF OCTOBER! What did I do? Broke my rules and stopped at a place where I had very good fishing just two days ago. There were bugs and fish rising but they were no longer taking the bugs off the surface like they were two days ago. In a little less than two hours of fishing, (it's over by 5:45 now), I rose six fish, three refused and three ate, I landed two 13 inch 'bows, every cast was at a rising fish. Three boats were fishing the same water and I never saw anyone hookup.

The outlook - The foliage is beautiful, the weather is predicted to be sunny and warm, the WB looks like a miniature Mississippi, as does the BR, the BK and Willow are almost bone dry, and the EB has so many fishermen on it that you are basically wasting your time trying to catch fish there. I'm working on my camp closedown list, (the weather isn't very good for deer hunting), will probably try to find a place to fish in solitude tomorrow, but may well head home Monday.

I've enjoyed very good fall fishing up until today, but the bucks are moving, (two spikes in the back yard this morning, a six and an eight standing in Lordville Road on my return tonight and deer with horns everywhere I went today. It's time to go sit in a tree.  

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